Ageless Warrior
by Ratnote
Summary: The world is on the brink of collapse. A miracle is needed to avert disaster. Maybe, just maybe, that miracle will come.


I don't own Kantai Collection.

It seemed that humanity had finally met its match. For all of its tenacity and stubbornness, it finally met a challenge that it could not best. Many hailed this great calamity as the end of days, the final hour before God would ascend the faithful to heaven, and eternally damn the sinners to hell. It was not a completely outlandish claim, the "demons," as they were called in the beginning, bore a striking resemblance to the creatures of the same name in the Bible, outlandish, hellish beasts who wished only death and destruction upon mankind. Many prayed for salvation, for God to rain down his holy fire from above in Heaven. It seemed their prayers were answered when the shipgirls appeared, a force of equally mysterious woman claiming to possess the souls of warships of the past and present. Man dared to hope again.

It wasn't enough.

_October 27 1944_

_US Navy Shipgirl Quarter, Yokosuka Naval Base, Empire of Japan_

Dr. Robert Sampson, PhD, darted down the hallway of the US Navy's Shipgirl Research and Summoning Center. He dodged an oncoming cart full of probably sensitive documents, the man pushing it shouting a rushed apology as he sped down the hall. Sampson continued his journey as he pondered how exactly he had ended up an ocean away from his home. The Navy had decided to place the US' primary Shipgirl base as close to the Japanese one as they could for one simple reason. They were the best. Japan knew the most and had the most Shipgirls. Something about rituals and spirits. He couldn't make heads or tails of half of what his Japanese counterparts talked about. All he knew was that it worked. It just works. It wasn't his job to question the methodology, his job was to build up the Navy's Shipgirl Fleet so that the US could contribute to the Abyssal war. Oh. The Abyssals. Nobody really knew what they were, only that they had appeared in 1937, quickly neutering the steel-hull navies of the world. They had wreaked havoc on the planet until the Japanese had summoned the first Shipgirl. Under immense international pressure and an understandable desire to not die, they handed over the secret to Shipgirl summoning. That had been seven years ago, and the war wasn't looking good, the combined navies of the world simply didn't have enough combatants to stem the tide. After all the former steel-hull Shipgirls had been summoned, the countries of the world resorted to tossing schematics of designed warships into the summoning portals, creating new Shipgirls that had never been steel-hull, they still had to provide all the resources to construct the designed ship, though. Coming out of his thoughts, Sampson arrived at his destination, the Summoning Chamber 4, one of six such chambers. This was were the magic happened.

"Good, Sampson's here." His boss said to himself absentmindedly. "Jenkins! Get the machine fired up!" He yelled to the engineer operating the control panel. Sampson noticed the battleships Iowa and Wisconsin standing out of the way, ready to intervene if the new summons were... unruly. The two Shipgirls were the perfect example of the non-steel-hulls. They had never even been laid down in real life, yet they performed just as well as any other ship.

He nodded to Wisconsin. She returned the gesture. "How's it goin'?" She asked. The two respected each other. He wouldn't call it friendship, but they hung out occasionally.

"Same old, same old, you excited for today? Their putting a lot of resources into this one." Today's summoning was special. The navy was pouring an exorbitant amount of resources into this one. They didn't even have design schematics! It wasn't too common a ship was summoned without designs today, but the blind summonings had resulted in some of the most powerful Shipgirls to date.

Wisconsin shrugged, "Nah. Probably gonna fail like the last few."

"You two! Behind the line! We're starting her up! Sampson, you monitor the instruments."

Sampson ran over to the instruments panel, it would give a vague idea on how well the summoning was going. "This better work..."

"Commencing summoning in three! Two! One! Now!" His boss yelled. The instruments spiked, which was to be expected.

"And now we wait." Jenkins uttered under his breath. He wasn't wrong, summonings could take up to eight hours.

A red light on his panel caught Sampson's eye. He glanced over to see that the portal was eating up way more power than it should. "Hey Jenkins, what do you make of this."

The engineer glanced over uncaringly before turning away. After a second or two he seemed to freeze and he whirled around, eyes almost popping out of their sockets. "Jesus Christ! Those levels are off the charts!" He whirled to where their supervisor was standing. "Boss! We've got a problem!"

He rushed over, quickly noticing the anomaly. "Shut it down! Now!" His voice had an edge of panic to it. Jenkins quickly complied. The portal didn't shut down. "I said shut it down!" He yelled over the cacophony of sound being emitted by the portal.

"I did!" Jenkins yelled, pressing every button he could think of to cut power to the machine.

"Boss! Energy's spiking!" Sampson yelled over his shoulder. The power usage had just tripled in a matter of seconds.

"Everybody! Find cover! We don't know what will happen!" His boss yelled. They quickly complied, hiding behind anything that could offer a semblance of cover, even the two battleships were huddled behind a barrier.

The portal reached its climax, spewing forth a massive outpouring of light, forcing all to cover their eyes. The sound increased in volume before...

All was silent.

"What the hell..." Sampson rubbed his eyes, trying to get the spots out, and clumsily climbed to his feet.

"Did it work?" Jenkins asked. The question brought attention to the portal itself, the people in the room scouring the area around it for any signs of a successful summoning.

"I don't think so." Sampson tentatively replied. "I can't see anything…"

"Damn it!" The supervisor yelled. "We could of summoned multiple battleships instead of this!"

His angry rant was halted when Jenkins called out, almost panicking, "Boss! You're gonna want to see this!" The research staff in the room bolted over to the console Jenkins was reading. Written on the screen in all capital text were six words.

SUMMONING SUCCESSFUL. 1 NEW SHIPGIRL DETECTED.

"What?" Sampson mumbled to himself. The other scientists seemed to agree based on their behavior. There was no new summon. They had checked. "Jenkins, are you sure this is working?" He asked.

"It should be…" Jenkins' face scrunched up in thought. "I did pre-summoning checks, there wasn't anything wrong with it then…"

"Check again, maybe that flash did something to it?" While Sampson and Jenkins were troubleshooting the machine, the others in the room were franticly searching for a reason as to what happened. This shouldn't have happened. Not one summoning had ever completely failed to summon at least something. The boss was speaking to someone on the room's telephone, probable his superior. By his expression, he might not be there much longer.

Iowa and Wisconsin stood in one corner of the room. They seemed to be calmest of those present in the room. Wisconsin broke the silence first, "What do you make of this?"

"I don't know… Let's just hope this doesn't turn out like that one time." Iowa answered, a small smile on her face.

"Yeah, let's hope."

_October 27 1944_

_USN Task Force 49, on Patrol near Japan_

USS Randolph, CV-15, was worried. This was her first combat deployment, as she had only been commissioned eighteen days ago. She had been optimistic, she was sailing with her sisters, Ticonderoga and Wasp. The former was almost as new as her, while the latter had almost a year of combat experience. Wasp was meant to be their mentor. It had seemed that everything would be fine, they would get to test out their planes on a few destroyers, maybe a cruiser or two, and if anything went wrong, Wasp and the other members of the task force would be able to salvage the situation.

That was the plan, at least.

What Randolph had not expected was an Abyssal princess with its escorts. As was to be expected, the task force was neither large enough nor experienced enough to handle such a threat. The only ship even capable of taking one the princess was Wasp, but that wasn't counting the at least ten escorts. To make things worse, Wasp had been hit by a lucky enemy dive bomber and was currently in the center of the formation being tended to by one of the destroyers. Randolph had sent out destress calls on every frequency she knew.

No one had answered.

Despite that, she continued broadcasting, hoping beyond hope that someone would come to their aid.

_October 27 1944_

_Somewhere off the coast of Japan._

The first thing she noticed was the crashing of the waves and the lapping of the water at her feet.

Wait.

Feet? Since when had she had feet? She looked down at herself. She seemed to be a bit taller than the average woman and had fair skin. Her straight hair reached her upper back and was a light grey color. Her clothing consisted of a black knee-length skirt, a black jacket with silver trim with a white dress shirt underneath, black tights, black fingerless gloves, an odd pair of boots which seemed to have… her old rudders on them? Odd. Turning left towards the odd weight she felt on her back, she found a large flight deck being held up by an arm that seemed to be protruding from a contraption on her back. The deck was angled and seemed to have four catapults. On her right side, she found her old bridge being held up by another arm. Spread all over her body were her dual-purpose gun mounts and a few quad anti-air guns. At each side of her hips was an aircraft elevator. She was understandably confused, the last time she had checked, she was not a human, but an aircraft carrier. Odd how things change. Her musings were interrupted by an incoming radio signal.

"Task Force 49 engaged by superior Abyssal force! Requesting immediate support!" The signal was sent on an old Navy frequency retired in the 50s. So why was it in use now?

She turned to her bridge, "Get VFP-63 ready for combat recon. Tell them not engage and to mark targets for follow-up strikes." Her captain popped out of the bridge and saluted. She instinctively reached down to her elevator, picking up an RF-8G Crusader recon aircraft. She placed the plane onto one of the catapults.

And with that, VFP-63 was off to figure out just what was going on.

"Captain, prepare VF-111 and VF-51 with mixed CAP and anti-shipping weaponry. Load VA-22, VA-94, and VA-95 with full anti-ship loads. I want them ready to launch immiediately. Bring radar online and sound general quarters." She felt her elevators load with aircraft as her radar started spinning and her 127mm/54 gun mounts swiveled into position. She paused momentarily, her mind turned to other things, what were the "Abyssals" that the signal had mentioned. Even more pressing, what had happened to her? Why was she now human, or something close to human. She looked down to her flight deck, reading the number painted on the front.

43

They called her the Ageless Warrior, she had served from the late 40s all the way into the 90s, didn't that earn her some rest? Sighing, she stared into the distance confused as anyone could be, but resolute in her conviction: if anything were to cause harm to America or her allies, she would be there to defend them. With that, she broadcast a signal to the ship sending the distress signal.

"Task Force 49, this is USS Coral Sea, CV-43, hold on. Help is coming."


End file.
